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Film Studies Minor

In harmony with the goals of the university, the Arts and Sciences College, and the goals of the Communications and English Departments that support the Film Studies Minor, the goal of the Film Studies Minor is to provide a “vigorous and dynamic” (Loyola University Mission Statement) interdisciplinary program of courses that creates in its students analytical intelligence and the “eloquence to articulate” (Loyola University Statement of Purpose) that analytical intelligence.

This goal is developed through a slate of historically, stylistically, and culturally diverse courses in the Film Studies Minor that are taught by Loyola faculty, not graduate students, in small class sizes, and in discussion format. The Film Studies Minor, in keeping with the Ignatian emphasis upon critical thinking, is comprised of Communications and English Department Film Studies courses that examine all aspects of film technique to explore how this twentieth and twenty-first century medium stimulates and educates our minds and emotions.

Film studies analysis is rich in the Jesuit tradition of examining and responding to contemporary and historical cultural products, specifically in the moral and aesthetic examination of film as cultural and aesthetic product. Students learn to analyze, evaluate, and contextualize the techniques, styles, rhetoric, and ideologies of individual films and of bodies of films from American and European countries, considering a variety of genres and cultures in the range of courses offered in the minor.

Both the Communications and English Departments emphasize a tradition of superior teaching that engages students in the classroom. Both departments, in their faculty who teach the interdisciplinary Film Studies Minor courses, value teachers in the Film Studies classrooms who are active as scholars in their disciplines. These faculty members inform the content of their Film Studies classes with the insights of their scholarship, thus also providing Loyola’s students with active models of professionalism in the Film Studies disciplines.

The Communications and English Departments share a common goal of excellence in advising their majors and minors. Through the Film Studies Minor courses, faculty advising of students in these courses, and departmentally-sponsored extracurricular activities, the Film Studies faculty members address each student’s academic development in a humanities-oriented, liberal arts environment. Through the Film Buffs Program, the Work-Study Program providing the Film Studies Minor courses with evening screenings of required films, students are able to work for the Film Studies Minor faculty. While working in the Film Buffs Program, students learn first hand from screening the films in the Film Studies Minor courses as well as through taking Film Studies courses about the most important cinema of specific historical periods, cultures and film genres. The Film Buffs Program, through its integral role in the Film Studies Minors courses, creates a true work and study internship/employment opportunity.

The goal of the courses in the interdisciplinary Film Studies Minor is to teach students the analytical, technical, and critical skills with which to examine, evaluate, and contextualize films as profoundly complex visual and aural texts. Students taking the Film Studies courses at Loyola learn to understand cinema in the true Ignatian tradition of learning about and thoughtfully responding to the world as intelligent leaders of our community. They learn to examine film as a mirror of and insight into our world.